


Dappled Sunlight

by icarus_chained



Category: Ouran High School Host Club - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Supernatural, Character Turned Into a Ghost, Friendship/Love, Gen, Ghosts, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-29
Updated: 2013-01-29
Packaged: 2017-11-27 11:40:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/661589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the AU prompt: Haruhi is a ghost that haunts the school. </p>
<p>Kyouya and ghost!Haruhi have a little conversation about Tamaki and friendship and not picking fights with poltergeists by yourself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dappled Sunlight

Haruhi leaned back against the pillar, dappled casually into light and shade by the sunlight through the music room windows, practically invisible. With a little more effort, a little more focus, she might have disappeared altogether, or shaded through into almost solidity. But for right now, watching Tamaki flail desperately at the far end of the room, pinned between Kaoru and Hikaru and arguing with florid passion against his tormentors, she wasn't really pushed.

And besides, she thought, with a faint and invisible smile as Kyouya leaned carefully against the wall at her side, she had other things to do right now.

"You know," the Shadow King murmured, after a long and thoughtful moment, "Tamaki thinks we're here to help you. The ghost of an unhappy young woman to whom we must show love and romance before she can move on."

Haruhi didn't bother to hide this smile, let it dapple her semi-visible face like sunlight through the window. She glanced sidelong at him, his stern, serious face behind those shielding glasses, and shared a small, wry smirk.

"Tamaki thinks a lot of things," she said. And it might have been mean, it might have been ill-spirited, many people who looked at Tamaki said things like that in another tone entirely. But for her, it was a simple fact, and not without fondness.

And Kyouya, in his turn, let a faint touch of a smile slip forward. "Yes," he agreed, and there was an edge of contempt, just a touch, Kyouya and Tamaki had the oddest of relationships sometimes, but it was fond, too, in its way. "Yes, he does."

Then, a few moments later, after a brief pause to be sure Tamaki hadn't _actually_ strangled Hikaru across the room, Kyouya ... offered something else.

"I have wondered," he mused, without looking at her. "I have wondered, sometimes, if Tamaki might not be right." His lip quirked as she looked sideways at him, rueful and smooth, tinged with knowing. Admitting Tamaki might be right? In public? Wonders would never cease. "He misses a great many things. But he also ... has a way of seeing things. About people. Now and again."

Haruhi blinked, letting herself fade forward, become that little more solid as she turned to face him. Tilting her head back, smiling faint and curious. "Oh?"

He didn't look at her. He quite studiously didn't look at her, removing his glasses to polish them carefully. In a way, that was an improvement, that simple act of misdirection. If she had threatened him, he would have faced her head on. If he was afraid. But he wasn't. He was simply ... commenting.

"You must admit, it's a little strange," he noted, his smile almost as invisible as hers. "A ghost who haunts a place in order to help the living. To help _strangers_. It is rather backwards, wouldn't you say?"

She smiled, shrugging. He wasn't really wrong, after all. "Well," she wondered. "Perhaps I've always been a little bent, that way?"

Kyouya snorted faintly. "Yes," he murmured, and there was a tinge of contempt, and a tinge of fondness, and perhaps Tamaki wasn't the only odd relationship this young man had, either. "Yes, I think you are a little bent in many ways, Ms Fujioka."

She grinned at him, simple and uncomplicated, and he flushed oddly, a delicate touch across his cheeks. And Haruhi felt it, that odd little lump of warmth in her chest, the reason she lingered, long after death, to touch people like this. To partake of them, and grant them a little warmth in return.

A little bent, yes. A little backwards, a little sideways. But oh, so very warm, at the heart of it.

"We can help you, you know," Kyouya said. His eyes not on her, but on a blond, frantic figure across the room, on a fierce, dramatic temper and a smile like sunlight in another way entirely. "He's right about that. Perhaps not the way he thinks, perhaps not to move on. But things like the poltergeist, for example?"

And he did look at her then, something grim and stern and a little vicious, and Haruhi flushed faintly, faded back to invisible before she thought, before she remembered herself and firmed defiantly in front of him. 

Because they had told her then, Tamaki first, furious and pained, and Kyouya later, cold and taunting and vicious, cruel to be kind, the only way he knew how. They had driven it home, that she did not stand alone, that she did not face things alone, that if she would fade bleeding into nothing before she relied on them, then she should leave first, leave now, for they weren't going to watch it. 

Yes, they had made that point clear. They had ... they had had a point.

"I know," she said, quietly. Because she did, now. She knew, she understood. It wasn't about moving on, it wasn't about leaving them. It was about not getting hurt. It was about letting them help, the only ways they knew how, because to do otherwise was only to hurt them in turn. She did ... she did understand that, now.

And after a long second, those sharp, steely eyes holding hers, dissecting and examining her in that ruthless way of his ... after a second, Kyouya nodded. Soft, and satisfied, standing back up from the wall and slipping his glasses back on with a faint, businesslike smirk.

"Good," was all he said, clipped and clean and not at all emotional, and oh, she loved him. All of them. Haruhi did love them. "Tamaki gets attached too easily, loves too far. He always has. But ... I should hate to see him hurt, Ms Fujioka. I would hate to see him hurt for your sake." And he meant Tamaki, yes, but she thought he meant a little more than that, too.

Haruhi smiled faintly, dappled in the sunlight from the windows, and stepped forward to brush his arm lightly, an intangible shiver of connection. He blinked at her, so oddly startled, and she smiled up at him.

"I'd hate that too," she assured quietly, meaning a little more than Tamaki herself. 

And the faint touch of his smile in response, startled and intangible and only barely there, was more warmth than all the Other Side could offer her. 

And perhaps always would be.


End file.
